Hey, you’re not one of those people who think crabs is an STD, are you? It’s not. Crabs are a parasite; it’s lice. That’s all it is. Having lice isn’t a disease. It’s bugs. Nature. You don’t slap a mosquito and consider yourself as having had a disease, do you? We live in a natural world. There are predators, pray and parasites and we’re all in it together. Circle of life, hakuna matada.

It’s easier, of course, to go on like this AFTER infestation. During is another story.

I got my crabs the real uncool way, which sucks. If you’re going to get crabs, you should at least get them the cool way. But not me. It was one of those magical nights at the Village Idiot. We were underage and it was Tuesday. I drank cans of Blue Ribbon until my guts disintegrated, at which point I excused myself for the toilet.

What happened in that cramped, filthy commode is between me and God, with whom I had the chance to thoroughly discuss the chemistry of canned penny beer and its effects on the digestive system. I won’t lie. It was touch-and-go in there, tears were shed. I saw through time and could hear the edges of the universe expanding. On the physical plane, something very bad was happening to me, but all I could do was sweat, push and pray.

It starts with a tiny itch about five days after exposure. Two weeks later, your bush is on fire and you can’t keep your hands out of there. My out-of-towner and I hadn’t seen each other in a month. There was no mystery. It was the toilet at the Village Idiot. It had won, after all.

I went through the emotional rainbow of response to discovering a crabs infestation: shame, terror, paranoia, uncontrollable laughter and apathy. When logic returned, I decided that home remedy would be the fastest and least embarrassing way to deal with the problem. My out-of-towner would be around in not long.

If you’ve never had to stop in the Lice Elimination section of your local chain pharmacy, good. The less people there, the better. Yet, there I was, in the basement of CVS on 6^th Ave., part of the problem, a carrier. Not wanting to linger in ugly light, I nabbed a pack of Nix and split.

No proper bathroom in those days. Just a shower closet in the kitchen and two good looking female roommates four years my senior. A friend’s girlfriend and her friend. New friends who shouldn’t see me like this, dripping lice mousse from my balls. I chained the door and stood naked on a towel in the kitchen, covered with poison.

In that shower, I discovered loneliness. Jesus, too, I guess, but mostly loneliness.

My out-of-towner arrived with me neither scritchin or a-scratchin’. Good thing I had put that whole awful incident behind me. Ah, youth! and I think we really learned something here today. Time to slap our hands together thrice and in a dusting-off fashion and close the books on this one. Bang the gavel, ring the bell. School’s out for summer.

It begins again with a tiny itch about ten days after eggs hatch for reinfestation to occur. Eggs, you see, aren’t always killed by Nix brand lice mousse. That’s why they include that tiny comb you threw away.

I did the Nix again. When that failed to work, I shaved off every strand with a disposable razor and doused the area in a double dose. I burned sheets, underwear and cloths. I brought Nix brand spray and poisoned the couch, the chairs and my mattress. I had itched my taint raw. I wanted those G-D bugs up off me.

My out-of-towner called the next day.

"Hey," she said, "I think I might have given you crabs."

"Uh..."

"Yeah, I don’t know where I got them, but I think I might have given them to you."

"Really," I said. "Well."

It’s not an STD. I’m telling you this again because I think you’re waiting for me to tell her the truth, that I gave her the crabs and that I had just been through hell and back trying to get rid of them. But crabs aren’t a disease, they’re parasites. They’re a drag, they itch and they’re difficult to kill, but they’re not a disease. That our crabs are related means nothing to me. We’re all related. Circle of life, hakuna matada.